When my parents moved to Delaware, I developed a sense of adventure by exploring this new state. A creek in my backyard flowed into a large forest, protecting a tributary that led into the Delaware River. I spent hours fishing each summer with a net. After I brought back my catch in a bucket, I attempted to build a dam to preserve my collection. Unfortunately, after each major storm, the dam overflowed freeing these big and colorful fish. Nonetheless, when I was younger I woke up with excitement, eager for what would happen each day.
I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things, Isaiah 45:7.
As time has passed, dealing with failed dreams and goals have taken a toll on my soul. After receiving two rejection letters from Hollywood last night, my joy for life has been replaced by anxiety, dread and disappointment. Instead of seizing future moments of free time that I do have, depression has placed me into a state of misery. The child like faith that I once possessed is drowning in self pity causing me to develop a half glass empty attitude. Like a tree that looks healthy on the exterior, somewhere along the way I have become hollow inside. Perhaps, I have become afflicted by spiritual termites, gnawing on my heart.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed, 1 Peter 2:24.
The book definition for hollow is having a hole or empty space inside. Synonyms include empty, vacant, void and unfulfilled. Muhammad Ali once said “age is whatever you think it is; you are as old as you think you are.” As a professional boxer, Ali demonstrated mind over matter to stay young despite his aging body. Yet, for many individuals, becoming hollow is now a reality, struggling to become whole again. As senior citizens retire and enter assisted living communities, they have to maintain an activity or hobby to keep hope alive. If not, the lonely will spend their remaining years on earth wasting away in a rocking chair, like an empty shell, hollow and unfulfilled.
by Jay Mankus
ExpressYourself4Him 